


A door up ahead not a wall

by Elster



Series: Magic and Loss [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dorian Pavus Has Issues, Dorian is an alcoholic, Gen, Halward Pavus' A+ Parenting, allusions to substance abuse, mentions of Felix Alexius - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 12:30:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6051658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elster/pseuds/Elster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After he's been involved in a scandal, Livia Herathinos visits her former fiancé. He's not doing so great...</p>
            </blockquote>





	A door up ahead not a wall

**Author's Note:**

> When you pass through humble, when you pass through sickly  
> When you pass through I'm better than you all  
> When you pass through anger and self deprecation  
> And have the strength to acknowledge it all
> 
> When the past makes you laugh and you can savor the magic  
> That let you survive your own war  
> You find that that fire is passion  
> And there's a door up ahead not a wall
> 
> Lou Reed - Magic And Loss

"Excuse the state I'm in, I did not anticipate visitors," Dorian said when he entered the room. He sounded weary, listless, didn't even try to put up his usual front of poise and sarcasm. She hadn't seen him in a while, the last time in 2029 TE, almost four years ago. He looked a fright. Face drawn and more gaunt than she could remember, dark circles under his eyes. Hair too long and in disarray, unshaven, and with an outgrown sad-looking moustache. He wore a robe that was unfashionable and creased.

"It's unseemly to stare," he admonished mildly as he let himself drop down on an armchair across from hers. "You look good bye the way, Livia, splendid as ever."

She blinked, composed herself, smiled. "Thank you. You look… Are you ill?"

Dorian made a loud exhale through his nose, she wasn't sure if it was supposed to be a laugh or a noise of dismissal. He looked out of the window instead of at her as he asked: "Let's get that over with. Surely you are here because of that whole thing with," he trailed of and made a lazy gesture with his hand, not bothering to finish the thought.

"Well, it's quite the scandal," she said primly. "Not that I'm surprised. I feign surprise, it seems to be expected of me. But whatever other flaws you have, honesty has always been your worst."

At this Dorian smiled, an expression so sad she took pity on him. 

"I'm not angry at you, if you should be worried about that, which I am almost sure you are not. Nonetheless. Know that the circumstances forced your father, the stubborn git, to finally terminate our engagement, much to my, well, let's not call it delight, but relief. I can finally pursue other options."

"I'm glad for you," he said, and he probably even meant it, the sentimental fool.

She raised an eyebrow at him. "I still maintain that you would have made a passable husband. We would have worked something out."  
He groaned and leant his head back on the backrest of his armchair, rubbing his eyes with his hands. "Kindly stop it, would you? I never in my life aimed to be passable or adequate or good enough."

"No, you aim to either be perfect or crash and burn, I can see that. Compromise is the heart of coexistence, Dorian."

"I also don't aim to coexist," he countered mulishly.

She allowed herself a grin, because it didn't matter at this point and he wasn't looking at her anyway. She'd always liked him, at least as much as you can like somebody you only met a few times a year at parties. He'd always been captivating, defiant and very clear about his lack of interest in her. He'd told her during their first dance that it wasn't personal, but he'd rather emigrate south and live as an apostate in some swamp than marry. Livia had hid her hurt under a smile, had waited for the dance to end and had kicked his shin the next opportunity nobody was looking. Ah, to be seventeen again.

He'd had an edge to him then, an energy and sharpness that she admired. They hadn't talked after that, avoiding each other until a few years later, when he'd started going nowhere without Felix Alexius. For some reason Felix had made it his mission to smooth over as many as possible of Dorian's strained relations, Livia included. So they had talked, and she'd found Dorian utterly changed from the boy she'd first met, still brazen, but in an airy and smooth way that was somehow more scandalizing and more acceptable at the same time than the unmasked scorn of his adolescence. 

"How are you really?" she asked in a rare fit of compassion.

Dorian really looked at her for the first time since he'd entered the room. "I'm fine, really," he said, "disconcertingly sober though. My father disapproves of my drinking. My father-" He broke off, closing his eyes and visibly pulling himself together. "The boat trip from Minrathous was a bit rough. But then I always get seasick, especially when I'm locked up under deck. And, well, I might not have been at my very best there. But to look on the bright side: the trembling has stopped and I can process solid food again. But I bet you want to hear nothing about that. Since all my dignity is merely theoretical at this point, I can give you a blow-by-blow and all the sordid details about how they found me with Abrexis. Maybe not all the details, It's perfectly possible I don't remember all of it. Still, should secure you a top spot in the rumor mill."

He drew breath to go on like that, but Livia interrupted. "I'm not here because of that. Well, not directly. I have a message for you, but nobody knew where you were, then this scandal, and then you disappeared again. It took me five weeks to confirm that you're back in Qarinus and to get your father to let me see you."

Dorian had gone still, looking at her with a raw mix of fear and hope on his face. "It's… Is it Felix? Oh Maker-" His voice cracked and he hid his face in his hands.

"He's not dead," she said quickly, hoping to reassure him before he did anything so unseemly as burst into tears. "That means, I don't know for sure, but he wrote me. The first letter came months ago, the last a few weeks. I think he wrote to everyone who could conceivably pass it on to you, at least that is the impression I got when I asked after you in the Minrathous Circle."

"Please." Dorian looked up, his eyes too shiny and red. He cleared his throat. "Would you please give me the letters?"

"Of course, that's why I'm here." She produced them, three sealed envelopes addressed to Dorian Pavus in Felix' scrawling cursive. Dorian took them and opened them, reverently as if they held the key to his salvation, and there it was, finally a spark life in him. "The last one said he's in Ferelden," Livia remarked as Dorian read the letters, "What is Alexius doing there?" 

Dorian didn't react, ignoring her as he read, read again, devoured every word. Finally he looked up at her. "Trying to save Felix, what else."

"But it's not possible," Livia objected. "It's a miracle Felix is even still alive."

"I know," Dorian said softly. He looked at the letters in his lap again, lightly ran his finger over a crease in the paper. "We did everything we could. Gereon is not in his right mind, hasn't been for some time. We had an argument. It's why I left. I wanted to come back for Felix, but they were already gone. I didn't know how to find them." He hung his head. "I shouldn't have gone, just because Gereon said things he didn't mean. I failed him. I… don't seem to be much good at anything else lately."

"When was this?" Livia asked.

Dorian frowned. "I don't know," he said slowly, carefully. "I had been busy, caring for Felix, trying to find a cure. I'd lost track of time. It must have been… I don't know. I think I lost my position in the Circle after a year or so, but there was a lot of time between that and… the end. After that, I'm even less sure. Time flies, huh?" He hesitated. "You said Abrexis is already five weeks ago?"

"And a bit. What are you doing all day?" She asked, worried in the face of his obvious confusion.

Dorian shrugged. "I sleep. I eat meals with my father. We converse. I rage against him, he shuts me down. He talks about what I'm going to do when I'm better. I think he's preparing a ritual to change me."

Livia felt the hair at the back of her neck prickle in alarm. What had started in a dry tone had trailed off into a monotone. Dorian's wit tended towards the wry, even satirical at times, but she was sure he wouldn't joke about that. He didn't seem as if he was joking. He looked at her with wide eyes, as if he hadn't known the things that came out of his own mouth. 

They sat there, frozen, Dorian's breath quickening until he broke the tension by running trembling hands through his hair, gripping and pulling hard. "What is wrong with me?" he groaned angrily. "I can't concentrate. I don't want to think about it." He sprung up from his seat, pacing, looking for something, before he gave up and sat back down. He took a deep breath that did nothing to mask his agitation. "You must think me quite mad," he said with a little laugh that did nothing to disprove the accusation. "And you wouldn't be wrong," he added, correctly interpreting whatever her face was showing in that moment.

Livia took one of his hands, the one that was not gripping Felix' letters like a lifeline, but hang limply from the armrest. "Dorian, you have to do something, stop him, escape, I don't know."

Dorian glanced at his hand in hers, then at her face. "I know. I have to find Felix."

"That's not the point," Livia said sharply, letting go of his hand. "You can't let your father do that to you. How can you sit here and talk to me and be all calm when this is going on? Why aren't you angry?" Damn it, she was angry, and she didn't even have the temper for it. They might not be friends exactly, but she'd known Dorian when his skin hadn't been that great and his nose too prominent in his face, before his other features caught up and it somehow all fit and looked chiseled instead of too sharp and too hungry. When he didn't hide his light under affectations and spat fire in the faces of everyone telling him what to do. 

She blinked away angry tears. Dorian looked at her as if he had never seen her before. "You really care," he said.

She raised her head, looked down her nose at him. "Evidently. What in Andraste's name have you been thinking?"

He avoided her eyes. "Do you know you're the first person apart from my father I have talked to in months?"

"I thought you were fooling around with that imbecile Abrexis."

"We didn't exactly talk." There was a sly smile on Dorian's face and it was absolutely fake. Livia huffed dismissively and didn't dignify that with a retort, though to be fair, she had started it.

Dorian straightened the letters, now crumbled from his grip earlier, on his thigh. After a while he said, "I was thinking, erroneously so I am starting to believe, that I have only one friend and he is unreachable and will be dead soon." His voice was very quiet, almost a whisper and he didn't look at her. "I was thinking that…" He trailed off. "Did I ever tell you about the desire demon I met in the fade? I told a lot of people about that. Most of those who know my… inclinations think they know what it offered me."

"And it didn't?" Livia asked quizzically.

"Well," he admitted lightly, "a bit of this a tad of that, you know how they are, always take three guesses to find something that's really tempting."

Livia waited for Dorian to explain, but he kept silent, seemingly lost in his contemplation of Felix' letters. "It offered to make you what your father wants you to be," she finally ventured.

He glanced at her fleetingly. "I always thought you were perceptive." He sat up in his seat, shoulders straightening, suddenly filled with a nervous energy that was almost tangible. She wouldn't have been surprised if sparks had started crackling over his hands. He shuffled the letters, folded them neatly and hid them inside his robe. "It's hard to be a disappointment," he said with a dramatic little sigh, and he managed to make it almost, almost sound like a joke. "But then again, when have I ever done anything the easy way?"  
"The sky will fall and the earth will crumble before we see the day," Livia said wryly. 

"Quite so," Dorian agreed and stood up. "Lady Livia Herathinos, it has been a pleasure," he said with a little bow, "I can honestly say I've never been so grateful for anyone to call on me, but I'm afraid there are some urgent matters I need to tend to."

Livia smiled at him. "Let me know if you need help."

Dorian smiled back, a fleeting little thing of a smile, there and gone again, but real and unguarded. "Thank you," he said, which meant he would not dream of actually taking her up on the offer, but Livia wasn't worried. She'd heard that Dorian had escaped the Order of Argent. If he was here it was only because he hadn't even tried. "You'll hear about it when I make it."

She didn't doubt it.

**Author's Note:**

> Some cobbled-together Dorian pre-canon timeline for everyone who's as confused as me:  
> 9:11 born  
> 9:20 Carastes, kicked out after he injures another boy  
> ran from Order of Argent Minrathous after three months  
> turned up in a drunken stupor at a house of ill repute in the elven slums  
> retrieved by Gereon Alexius and taken in as apprentice (between 9:28 and 9:31?)  
> 4 years later becomes fully-ranked Enchanter in Minrathous Circle (between 9:32 and 9:35?)  
> around 9:35 darkspawn attack on Felix and his mother (Livia)  
> around 9:37 falling out with Gereon and subsequent downward spiral  
> 9:37/9:38 Dorian wants reconciliation, but Gereon and Felix disappeared  
> 9:38 Scandal due to affair with son of Lord Ulio Abrexis, Dorian's father orders abduction from Abrexis' home and return to Qarinus, kept prisoner by his father for several months  
> 9:38/9:39 escape to the countryside and from Tevinter  
> 9:39/9:40 new contact with Alexius, Alexius wants to recruit him into the Venatori, Dorian comes to Redcliff  
> 9:41 (2035 TE) Conclave, Breach and refounding of the Inquisition


End file.
